The lowest paid working fmilies are to face a triple whammy of in-work benefit cuts multi-millionaire George Osborne announced today.

Those with jobs, but on shit wages, will see Tax Credits, Housing Benefits and Child Benefit all frozen in a real term cut to the incomes of the very poorest should the Tory Party be re-elected next year. According to The Guardian the Tories are planning to freeze almost all benefits for two years including: “jobseeker’s allowance, tax credits, universal credit, child benefit, income support, the work-related activity component of employment and support allowance and the local housing allowance.”

Despite Tory lies to the contrary disabled people are also likely to be the hardest hit by these changes. Whilst Osborne claims they will be protected, the inclusion of most claimants on Employment Support Allowance means that hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people will see already meagre incomes shrink even further. If they have children, or live in rented accommodation, then they too will also face cuts to child and housing benefits.

At a time when rents are soaring in many parts of the country it is the inclusion of Local Housing Allowance in these plans that is the nastiest cut of all. There are already huge numbers of people facing homelessness due to soaring rents, slashed social housing and the refusal of many landlords to rent to tenants on any form of benefits. Osborne’s plan will make this situation far worse, and will affect those in and out of work alike, along with many of the poorest pensioners.

For those on the lowest benefit rates, such as Jobseeker’s Allowance, these policies will cause devastation. Welfare cuts already made mean that unemployed people, living on just £72.40 a week (or less if they are under 25) often have to use that money to top up their rent, pay the Bedroom Tax, or pay Council Tax. With the price of heating and transport soaring Osborne’s cuts will mean many more people queuing in foodbanks instead of having the time to look for work.

Once again the Chancellor has shown his utter contempt for those who, unlike him, were not handed a vast fortune on a plate due to their parents wealth and privilege. Despite the rhetoric, he couldn’t give a fuck whether his cuts hit low paid so-called hard working families, unemployed or disabled people or the children of struggling parents. If you are poor you are fair game to this Government who, if they are re-elected, plan to make you a lot poorer.

Freezing LHA is very bad, but nobody seems to have picked up on one of the nastiest and least heralded cuts that the Tories have already inflicted on the poorest – the abolition of 100% council tax rebate. Council tax charges are crippling to claimants, even in the lowest bands. High time someone took up the cudgels.

Always the same with the Tories Eric. its only a matter of time.i don’t think they would hesitate in opening up with that arsenal of weaponry they’ve stocked up on,and supposedly everyones’ choice Boris is at the front of it making claims as such about using these.

sadly we have generations now where no one in the household has worked

the amount low earners pay in ni and tax is a pittance compared to how much they get back

the whole system doesn’t work there has to be a better way to support our nation without all these top up benefits and letting landlords profiteer. build more social housing make house buying only for those who want to live in them not buy to let. cap upper wages as hard as lower wages – raise minimum wage out off the gutter

More cuts to the poor. I avoid coming on this site as I get so depressed after reading all the stories on here. It kind of frightens me really, I just wonder where everyone with out money will be in ten years, assuming they are still alive & have not starved or frozen to death.

It. Doesn’t. Believe me. I’m a working lone parent and by the time I’ve paid my rent contribution and share of council tax half my wages is gone. OK I get tax credits and I’m better off then jsa claimants, and I don’t have hassle from jcp but I can’t afford much heating ect. We only had a holiday this year because a friend paid…. and now more freezes? Plus I’m a public sector worker n we all know public sector pay rise frozen…

Fuck that, I ain’t going quietly in to the night, I barely survived Atos in 2012, but survive I fucking did, and now I’ll do what it takes to survive to see that Bald evil cunt ids tried in the Haig. I won’t starve, I won’t freeze, with even less money than I was on 2 and a half years ago. The system created me, so I fucking embrace what they made me become

What more do you expect from any Government that have millionaires making decisions for the rest of us? How many people on this site voted at all , the richer people will always vote because they want to keep that they have, don’t believe UKIP they now have more Tory’s than the Tory party!
They won’t pick on the companies that won’t pay the proper tax because they can get it from the cutting the income of the small people!
Ask the Labour Party what they are going to do about benefits or even making the companies pay their fair share of tax.
There are more poorer people than rich … Lets stat asking questions.

I have repeatedly asked Labour if they will abolish Benefit Sanctions, but they refuse to reply. Also asked them (repeatedly) if they will increase JSA to the correct legal level, again no answers. I take that as a negative. I’ll be voting Green (again).

If one person asks a question then the Labour Part can safely ignore them. If many thousands of people start asking questions then they will have to take some kind of notice.

Sounds like it could be something to form the basis of a 38 Degrees campaign. I know it’s clicktivism, but if there are enough numbers then Labour might take some notice.

Starting a local group that focuses expressly on benefit issues in areas where Labour have MPs could also be a good way of having them take note – if you’re campaigning loudly and locally they will take note. If you can cause them maximum embarrasment then they will take notice.

So what about employing all those immigrants that come here and live off our benefit system, get prority over housing before those that were born here,get 150 quid a week for there heating plus another 150 for the electricity bill, if they havnt got work after a month then feck en off back where they came from, that would help cut any deficit by billions a lot more than freezing any pay rises in benefits, and also stop this loony government spending billions on hair brained schemes that benefit no one but the rich, I know who i’ll be voting for in the next election and it aint going to be labour or the Con servers.Vote UKIP……..

Keith, I think your Browsers gone wonky, you’re on the wrong forum mate. UKIP my arse. Evil Tory policies aimed at either eradicating or enslaving the poor are absolutely nothing to do with immigrants.

Think Keith was thinking of a Marxist politics that gives no contest to the progressive policies of no borders and the free movement of workers that enables corrupt free market capitalists to undermine and destroy the indigenous working class communities

Firstly, you lot keep using that word, “indigenous”. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Secondly, you really want to talk about the “free movement of workers” (which is, frankly, arrant bullshit) and not mention all the problems caused by the unfettered movement of capital, compared with which workers are pretty much imprisoned in their own borders? The free movement of people is a necessary counterbalance to the free movement of money – and those who resist the former, while revelling in the latter, should be clear about exactly what they are supporting. Which is a power-law increase in inequality, the asset-stripping of nation states, the wholesale abolition (by redundancy) of democracy, the decimation of workers’ rights, the elimination of support for those who can’t work or find work, the primacy of vulture capitalism… and ultimately the destruction of Western civilisation itself.

All in the name of petty nationalism. Because our flag must live on, though there are only mouldering corpses left to fly it.

Your point seems to support a international brigandage of vulture worker capitalists camp following the unfettered movement of capital, destroying the social fabric and economies of settled communities.

Aside from the fact that you’ve yet to show any reason why that’s a bad thing, I think you’re missing the whole “necessary countermeasure” thing. At the moment, capital can be abstracted from labour, because capital can float above (and dictate) nation states while labour is sentenced to, well, labour beneath their yokes. Liberating labour may result in it chasing the capital temporarily, but in the end capital, with nowhere to run, will have to bow to the will of labour.

I bet you think “world government” is an inherently evil thing too. And, even dafter, that it doesn’t already exist.

I don’t think I was sufficiently clear in my last post. Basically, the point I’m making is that if one accepts that most migration happens for economic or political reasons, then removing borders will cause an equalisation of both economic inequality and political disparity – which will, in turn (and counter-intuitively, which might be why you’re having trouble with it), reduce the drivers of migration, and therefore reduce – or at any rate, equalise – migration as a phenomenon.

Whereas your “solution” (as is the case with so many right wing “solutions”) actually exacerbates the very problem you are so insistent must be solved, simply because you want someone else to suffer in perpetuity rather than accept a temporary dip in your own level of comfort.

Your are really talking of the globalisation of exploitation, poverty and war.
A world power capitalism that will have absolutely nothing to counter it, governed by a world elite, it is the stuff of caliphates and imperialism.

Have you not been paying attention? These things ARE ALREADY GLOBALISED. What isn’t is the rule of law and the power of the masses, and that’s because of the continued insistence on keeping us caged in powerless little states, enslaved to the forces that have globalised themselves whilst telling us all how evil globalised government would be. So now we have globalised government anyway, but it’s the rule of might, not the rule of law. There IS no law that high up, and those who float around there will do everything in their power to ensure there never will be.

And they rely on people like you, spouting opinions like yours, for their success. They truly couldn’t do it without you.

keith
you obviously don’t suffer from coulrophobia…
UK productivity is 35% lower than it was 35yrs ago….caused to a great degree by selling off our public assets and deindustrialization…our inheritance is being and has been stolen…we need a job creation economy and dump the job seeking economy we now have…we need to build more homes and to produce the goods that supply our retail economy within the UK.. see the work of the jimmy reid foundation…please stop your alienation and scapegoating of others…as it is only becoming of bigotry…

All parties , green, snp, tory, labour. libdem believe in mass immigration. the more immigrants that come here they compete with YOU for the finite number of jobs here. theres millions of british unemployed but we supposedly need a never ending flow of immigrants to do the jobs, fucking madness. now they want to destroy the green belt to build millions of house for them.
vote green= mass immigration = destroying the countryside you supposedly want to protect

fenriss
what crap you speak..
LESS THAN TWELVE PERCENT OF THE UK IS BUILT ON in TOTAL.. and much of it is badly planned….
and in scotland there are 2.5 hectares/personhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-r_J14n100 you might learn something about the imperialist union that you support…you know the one that also sets dwp policy, that the dwp enthusiastically carry out and you claim NOT to support…the union is set up to crush and suck dry it’s citizens…

Seriously, though, how desirable do you think Britain *IS* for people in other countries right now? Do you think that nobody’s heard about the decimation of the welfare state? Or that people haven’t worked out that with 400,000 spare jobs between 2m people they’d best make sure they actually have a job to come to? Or that those wishing to escape persecution in their own countries aren’t cognisant of the fact that they will likely end up shoved in a concentration camp (for that’s what Yarls Wood et al are) as soon as they get here? Or that dickheads like you are shouting into a vacuum and therefore can’t be heard overseas?

Your stereotyping is of inferior immigrants reliant on welfare benefits and unable to compete, when in fact many have capitalist middle class aspirations and are displacing the settled working class from the lower rung of the jobs market in their climb up the capitalist social ladder.

Think you are just sore at the British working class because they did not deliver your authoritarian revolutionary ideals and now they must be dispensed with. What are you hoping for now an anti capitalist jihad against globalisation the will deliver an authoritarian one world caliphate.

Are you so politically bankrupt that all you can do is fire the charge of racism at anyone who does not share your world view, doubt the will unite the masses of the world.

Nah. I only level the charge of racism at people who obsess on indigenous peoples, settled communities, the destructive effects of immigration, and how political correctness has doomed society; and who, when they’re being handed their arses in arguments, start using loaded words like “caliphate” and “jihad” to characterise their opponents’ position.

You know – racists.

I’m sure that you would agree that free speech, if it covers your right to take these positions and use this language, extends quite far enough for me to be able to ascribe such a fitting term to those positions and that language?

(It took me a while to realise what you were doing with “caliphate”. Probably because, being Caucasian and an atheist, I don’t readily recognise racially charged terms when someone else starts throwing them around. But then, that’s white privilege, I guess.)

As for telling me what I’m “sore” at (and especially when it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the position I’ve outlined) – you do understand the *extent* to which you just conceded the whole argument, right? The only reason to start privsplaining to me what motivates my position is an inability to actually argue against it successfully, and a desire to bring the character of your opponent into primary focus in the hope that it’ll be a softer target.

You accuse me of character attack you are the one who got there first, the “sore” was not a personal attribute it was the soreness of your argument. Your argument is constructed to close down the exchange of opinion, the inability of that argument to progress is your censorship and the slander of your opponent.

No, I didn’t. I characterised your positions with a term. I didn’t try to tell you what your motives were. And it ain’t slander if it’s fair comment.

Moreover, you really need to look up the definition of “censorship”. (You could try http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1552963.html for a fuller explanation than just the dictionary definition.) Here’s a little hint, though: if I were censoring you, the VERY LAST THING I COULD POSSIBLY BE DOING is still replying to you. What I’m doing is the exact opposite of censorship: I’m giving you all the rope you need. Not my fault you happen to be an unconsciously expert noose-maker.

Of course, we’re both dependent on the patience of Mr Void, given that it’s his front room this row is cluttering up, and I suspect that might be wearing a tad thin now. But even if he deletes all of our comments, neither of us will have been censored. Because we can both set up our own blogs and have at it therein.

That you resort to using that word only demonstrates how desperate and frustrated your rather pathetic sense of entitlement has become. (Or it would, were there anything left to demonstrate.)

Actually Just passing makes a valid point about movement of Labour. For example the movement of Poles to Britain caused a rise in the average wage in Poland due to a shortage of labour between 2009 and 2011.
Once borders are removed and labour is free to follow the highest wages then things equalise and it matters not where corporations set up they have to pay the same wage.
In the short term there are some issues but the long term goal is to get everyone on an equal footing. Something the EEC promised to do some 50 yrs ago but has so far failed to achieve.
The failure to achieve this aim was brought about by capitalists and landowners hijacking the EEC and using it to push up prices and steal billions in funds that were meant to support the working class.
Factor in those pursuing their national interests and it is bound to fail. Remove national interests and replace them with workers interests and it will be much easier to achieve, I.e. same wage across Europe, same benefits across Europe, same health provision etc etc.
It matters not who rules, socialists, marxists, capitalists if the working class work together then we have the say regardless.

I have no problem with immigration nor with immigrants. I do not blame them for any of our problems. The Green party are more Socialist than Labour, and UKIP are Fascists same as the Tory scum, Lib Dems are fucking no one, we don’t have a candidate for SWP or Class War in my area, and so in the absence of any other Party to vote for Green it is.

They keep repeating the crap that hard work will pay but if you are on the minimum wage with no possible overtime then it will be impossible to buy your own home or put money away for a decent private pension however hard you work. Digby Jones who spoke before Osborne said he didn’t support any party but his comments suggested he was prepared to kiss Osbornes ring. I guess they wouldn’t have had him speaking unless they knew he would pay homage to the tories.

These mythical cards are supposedly designed not only to control what people buy in shops but also where they shop! You won’t be able to buy things at your local corner shop and will probably have to go to the nearest Tesco or whatever. Lurvely!

Once upon a time it was understood that these benefits were society’s compensation to the people it had failed to support into work, and that’s the basis on which cash was payable. Especially for those who, it was agreed, couldn’t work. And that was when there was near enough full employment. Now there’s nowhere near full employment, and the employment being offered is grossly sub-par, yet not having a job – let alone being agreed by all concerned to be unable to work – is treated as an individual moral failing that must be corrected by punitive means. What are people supposed to do? Murder someone with a job and apply in their stead? Clearly the Tories are so lost in their own sociopathy that they wish to project it onto the population at large.

(Oh, and you can bet that their poverty plastic won’t cover the computers they require people to have in order to access the internet. At least, not the kind of computers that people in poverty might buy – the thirty-quid cast-offs on eBay. Kafka would have been ashamed to have written this.)

I think in many areas this will already be the case. In the early 80s I moved to West Wales and due to the very poor employment situation there (and high unemployent, at that time up to 27% in some areas) people’s only way of managing was to at the very least do deals that represented at least partial barter, and even the gift economy approach wasn’t uncommon.

If its the same as In December 2012 Shelbrooke introduced a Ten Minute Rule bill under which UK welfare claimants would be issued with a cash card instead of receiving their benefits in cash. The card would only permit claimants to make purchases such as food, clothing, energy, travel and housing, and prevent them indulging in luxuries such as cigarettes, alcohol, satellite television, and gambling, well i live at home with mum, so no food, clothing i go to charity shops obviously cant be used there, energy live with mum, travel occasionally i go town, housing live with mum, i dont drink, smoke, watch satellite tv or gamble.. so they will say since he doesnt spend anything lets stop all his benefits as he doesnt need it

The assertion that disabled people will be protected is an out and out lie, and it’s to Labour’s eternal shame (if they still have such impulses) that they don’t call the Tories on it.

From the way the Tories are singing, you would imagine that anyone in the Support group of ESA is safe. Well… nope. The Support Group component of ESA is half the ex-IS component, and when added to LHA the proportion is even smaller. Added to which, most recipients of low rate care DLA will be thrown off it altogether – with knock-on effects on their ESA entitlement – when their circumstances change and they get forced over to the PIP system – which, let’s not forget, is currently running with such a backlog that many people who applied as soon as PIP came in are still waiting for decisions on their conditions, despite having conditions that urgently require support, with no end to their wait in sight. And being disabled doesn’t exempt anyone from Poll Tax 2.0 (whether that’s the bedroom tax or the bit of the council tax that the postcode lottery doesn’t cover is left to the reader). And then there are all the cuts to local government, which have made social care (the responsibility of local authorities) all but impossible to get hold of any more… and the wholesale demolition of the NHS… and I’m sure I’ve forgotten far more.

I don’t drink alcohol, smoke or gamble either. All IDS’s idea would cause is a black market and/or more crime. If he directed this sort of thing against blacks, Jewish people, Muslims or other minorities he’d be in trouble for racism, but it’s ok to bother people like us who just want to live our lives quietly.

I drink occasionally and do like an e-cig, but I don’t have to do either of those things. What worries me far more is what people need in emergencies that the cards won’t let you buy, given that the proposals seem to be emanating from people with (a) no imagination, (b) no capacity for trust, and (c) a strange belief that anyone less economically productive than the average should be sentenced to a life of unremitting bleakness, unleavened by even the smallest of innocent pleasures.

While people are about as limited in their choices as it’s (in)humanly possible to be – let’s limit them a little further in case they start to get ‘above themselves’ and dizzy from all that choosing where to shop …

@just passing
(Yeah, don’t expect condoms to be available on those cards either.)

No doubt should the Nasty Party get back in power next May then that odious shit George Smith (his birth name) will introduce compulsory sterilisation of benefit claimants together with their siblings.

Re the cards, won’t that also mean no cheap fresh fruit and veg from market stalls? Tesco’s will love that! How about clothing from charity shops? Or market/ebay bought Christmas gifts for the kids because that’s all they can (can’t) afford with the little they are struggling with already?

Oh well, we’ll all be dead & gone one day, and the good thing about that is it also includes IDS, Osborne, & Cameron and that’s something to look forward top. The thought of their deaths is the only thing that keeps me going.

For me it’s the thought of mine. I think it’s underestimated how much of a comfort suicidal ideation can be; the knowledge that I can check out tomorrow if it’s too much to bear is sometimes the only thing that gets me through today.

I hate to sound like a twat, but seriously, the stress of this is making me more I’ll. Here’s another scenario. Teenager at college, needs train/bus fare and lunch money. Does mum give them the card each day with the weeks/months benefit loaded on with the chance it could be lost or stolen? Or does the kid have to give up college? Again, another way of stopping the plebs from bettering themselves. Vile cunts!

The Chancellor’s Conference speech contained a statement about disabled people and benefits which was misleading, but went largely unchallenged by the mainstream media. Mr Osborne promised a two year freeze on working age benefits if the Conservatives are re-elected but made a point of saying, “disability benefits will be excluded”. Is that true?

Well, it all depends on what you consider to be a disability benefit. Included in the proposed freeze are people who receive Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and are part of the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG). These are people who the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have decided are not fit for work at the moment, but are required to undertake work related activity, with a view to returning to work in future.

The public would probably assume that this group was for people who had had an accident or injury from which they would soon recover, or an illness which was expected to get better. No doubt that’s what most of the audience in the conference hall who applauded the Chancellor’s speech would think, if they thought about it at all.

Its about time people woke up and remove the blinkers set on them long ago by a government who really don’t care about nothing but lining their own pockets with gold . the whole seedy system has to change , its a case of the rich people not being affected by fines but the poor persons life can go down hill fast after a parking ticket for stopping on faded yellow lines .. look whats happening , petrol prices are a joke , it costs £20 a day to drive an average car round , half an average wage , food prices are rising a tell tale sign of overcrowding , and the doors are open for more people to flood in fooled by a good wage price only to find the cost of living is beyond expensive , its well into the extortion category, but more people will arrive making the costs grow even higher as demand makes resistance , laws are changing to become the invisible cattle gates , guiding you into being quiet as you work harder and longer well into old age or death , for ever running a mathematical treadmill that absorbs your energy , and creates money to make the rich ones life even easier .The rich can enjoy private medical treatment and spacious living conditions all on the backs of the poor who are in a system that is domesticated slavery , that if they fail , will be subjected to having all privileges and safety net removed , life line money stopped so they cant pay rent and end up on the street , ignored and despised by clever brainwashing that portrays them as workshy rats ,who are rolling a dice to survive on the streets with strict no camping laws , bus stop benches fitted on an incline to prevent them sleeping on , tents confiscated , and the area disinfected and hosed down , treated like animals in a time when we are reaching for the stars , Its time this system was stopped and the wealth shared out , in the form of land and equal space and materials to make a home on the planet all were born on and rightly have a right to live on in peace . Everyone is now put on community work for being unemployed , and probation for being sick , and no one is complaining … it would be a good idea for the Government to actually create work for people than start running social experiments , and have a sanctuary for the homeless , and education available for others to help them , ,, and when ill , everyone should get proper care in high class surroundings , so that they can quickly get their life on the road instead of being forced into a situation that makes them face no choice but to commit a crime then jail for more ill treatment , in medieval and small tormenting spaces that does nothing but please the false ones who have too much money for anything like such to happen to them ,,,,… People all work the same amount of hours , the credit should be the same ,give people good lives so crime is not needed or desired . a very sad and unfair system indeed.

All this distortion has occurred because the politicians (Thatcher to Blair) have given the keys to the kingdom to the bankers. All the bankers are doing is helping themselves to big bonuses and diving in because nobody is willing / able to stop them. Now everybody who brought a house near me and around my area in the past 70 / 80 / 90’s are diving in getting cheap credit to convert their homes into 2 / 3 flats and letting them out. As a result a minimal home from the past for a family to live and grow up in has been downsized by half to a third. Just to keep the good times rolling for the banks. All this because the price of credit for the last twenty years was too low. The politicians don’t give a fig about anyone, unless you offer to fill up their or their party bank accounts. Labour can’t be trusted to “CHANGE ” anything, the toffs with their dwindling membership and divisive policies need extermination. That don’t leave a lot you can vote for and that’s the real problem this Country faces today. The political elite forged this utopia and NO ONE wants to fix it, good luck everyone.

Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other blogs? I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my visitors would enjoy your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to send me an e mail.

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